Two scientists working at Canada’s top microbiology laboratory passed classified scientific information to China, and one of them posed a “realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security,” national intelligence agency documents and a report show. safety investigation.
The hundreds of pages of reports on the two researchers, Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, who were married and born in China, were released to the House of Commons on Wednesday after a national security review by a special parliamentary committee and a panel of three pensioners. senior judges.
Canadian officials, who have warned that the country’s academic and research institutions are a target of China’s intelligence campaigns, have tightened rules on collaboration with foreign universities. Canadian universities can now be excluded from federal funding if they enter into partnerships with any of them 100 institutions in China, Russia and Iran.
The release of the documents was the subject of a long debate in Parliament that began before the last federal election, in September 2021. Opposition parties asked to see the documents at least four times and felt that the Liberal government was in contempt of Parliament in 2021. government filed a lawsuit in an attempt to keep the documents hidden, but withdrew it when the vote was called.
The release comes as the country is conducting a special judge-led investigation to examine allegations that China and other foreign nations interfered in Canadian elections and political parties. Some of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s political opponents have accused his government of failing to adequately respond to Chinese interference in Canadian affairs.
But Mark Holland, Canada’s federal health minister, told reporters late Wednesday that “at no time did national secrets or information that threatened the security of Canada leave the laboratory.”
The pair were escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, during the summer of 2019 and subsequently stripped of their security clearances. They were fired in January 2021.
The same year, the government published heavily redacted documents about their dismissal, triggering a battle with opposition parties demanding more details about the security breach.
The large quantity of newly released documents, which have significantly fewer revisions, offers more details about the scientists’ unauthorized cooperation and information exchanges with Chinese institutions. The documents also revealed that Dr Qiu had failed to disclose formal agreements with Chinese agencies in which a Chinese institution agreed to pay large sums of money for research. He also agreed to pay her an annual salary of 210,000 Canadian dollars (about $155,000).
The pair could not be located and did not appear to have any obvious local representatives. Some Canadian media outlets reported, based on undisclosed sources, that they moved to China after being fired. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police opened a criminal investigation in 2021, but its status is unclear and no charges have been laid.
The documents released Wednesday contain no general response from the couple. But they show that during interrogations by investigators, Dr. Qiu repeatedly said she was unaware that she had broken safety rules, blamed the health agency for not fully explaining the procedures, and often tried to mislead investigators until when not confronted with contradictory evidence.
In a letter to Dr. Qiu, the public health agency said she “expressed no remorse or regret. You have not accepted responsibility for your actions and have placed the blame on PHAC,” she added that she has shown “no signs of corrective behavior, rehabilitation or desire to resolve the situation.”
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service also found that Dr. Qiu repeatedly misrepresented his ties to investigators and organizations in China, relationships it described as “close and clandestine.”
In a classified report, the intelligence agency said that when asked about her exchanges with scientists and organizations in China, she “continued to make outright denials, feign ignorance, or tell outright lies.”
An internal investigation report for the Public Health Agency of Canada, which includes the lab, shows the pair came under suspicion in 2018, when Dr. Qiu was named as the inventor of a patent granted in China that appeared to use research developed from the agency for an Ebola vaccine.
That revelation, in turn, suggested that the pair were involved in several violations of safety rules at the lab, parts of which are designed to work on the world’s deadliest microbes, including those that could be used for biological warfare.
Those violations included attempts by Dr. Qiu’s graduate students at the University of Manitoba, all Chinese citizens, to remove material from the lab and to be allowed to wander the facility unescorted.
In one episode, X-rays revealed that a package delivered to the lab for Dr. Cheng – and labeled “kitchen utensils” – contained vials of mouse protein. The discovery highlighted that Dr. Cheng had broken protocols, according to the documents.
An investigation by the intelligence agency found that Dr. Qiu had a formal agreement with Hebei Medical University to work on a “talent program,” something described as a project “to enhance technological capabilities national teams of China”.
A report documenting the investigation adds that it “could pose a serious threat to investigative institutions, including government research facilities, incentivizing economic espionage.” That agreement promised approximately 1.2 million Canadian dollars (about $884,000) in research funding. The agency said the couple did not disclose, as required, that they had a bank account in China.
Dr. Qiu, the intelligence service said, also had a resume used only in China that showed she was a visiting professor at three Chinese health research institutes and a visiting researcher at a fourth.
Exactly what information Dr. Qiu may have provided to China and how China may have used it is unclear from either internal investigations or intelligence agency reports.
The intelligence service said many institutions had been working on research into “potentially lethal military applications.” Asked as part of an internal investigation about potential military uses of his work, Dr. Qiu said the idea had not occurred to him, the documents show.
The internal investigation found that Dr. Qiu’s trip to Beijing in 2018 was paid for by a Chinese biotechnology company.
Mr Holland said the laboratory’s management demonstrated an “inadequate understanding of the threat of foreign interference”.
He added: “I believe a serious effort was made to adhere to those policies, but not with the rigor required.”
In a statement, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, said the Chinese government and its agencies, “including the People’s Liberation Army, were allowed to infiltrate Canada’s high-level laboratory.” The statement adds, using the People’s Republic of China’s abbreviation, “They were able to transfer sensitive intellectual property and dangerous pathogens to the PRC.”
Vjosa Isai contributed reporting from Toronto.